AustLit

Author's note: At a time when nationalism is one of the dominating factors in human relations, when men are grouped into factions and live under the influence of shibboleths, it is not irrelevant to turn to the history of the first leader who divided his followers from his enemies by the sign of the original and distinguishing shibboleth. Jephthah was a Hebrew chieftain long before those distinguishing characteristics, which now mark the Jews, had had time to develop. ... These three forces of nationalism, mystically perceived realpolitik, and the foreshadowing of Christianity, are, as I see them, the dominant forces at work in the souls of men to-day. It is to portray these, in one pattern at least of their inter-relatedness, that I have retold the history of Jephthah, .., as an attempted orientation of contemporary tendencies, beheld in miniature and magnified under a lens. E. L. G. W.